Yunior García Aguilera is a Cuban actor, playwright, and activist, founder of Trébol Teatro and the Facebook group Archipiélago. He was born in Holguín, Cuba in 1982.
His long and solid theatrical career began when he was just in the fourth grade, writing and performing alongside classmates. In his hometown of Holguín, he joined the Asociación Hermanos Saíz (AHS), which allowed him to gain experience and publish his works. He took on the artistic direction of the theater company Alas Buenas, whose play, Sangre, was awarded seven prizes at the National Festival of Small Format in Santa Clara.
At the age of 17, he entered the National School of Art (ENA), specializing in acting. In 2003, he founded the Trébol Teatro project alongside young actors who had graduated from ENA, with the aim of creating their own discourse, a creative and innovative space. That same year, he completed his studies as an actor at the ISA (Higher Institute of Art), graduating with honors.
He has written scripts for television and film. Cerdo (a fiction short film produced in 2018) was presented at the 40th edition of the Latin American Film Festival.
Yunior was one of the main figures of the November 27, 2020 (27N) protests that took place in front of the Ministry of Culture (MINCULT) by a group of artists, intellectuals, activists, and the general public following the events that occurred at the San Isidro Movement headquarters the night before. On November 26, the police forcibly removed the young people who had sought refuge at that headquarters in order to demand the government's release of the rapper Denis Solís González. Some had also been on a hunger strike for several days.
From this peaceful demonstration, a group was democratically elected that met with the Vice Minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas, and other government representatives. The goal was to engage in dialogue to achieve agreements that would respect creative freedoms, freedom of expression, and press freedoms, as well as the cessation of repression against artists whose work diverges from the official message established by the Cuban regime. Yunior was part of this group along with Katherine Bisquet, Tania Bruguera, Camila Acosta, and others.
The playwright made headlines again following the events that took place in Cuba on July 11, 2021 (11J) when people across the island spontaneously took to the streets in a historic demonstration against living conditions, the government's poor management, and the lack of freedoms. Hewas peacefully protesting alongside other young artists outside the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) when they were violently thrown into a garbage truck by State Security agents.
Subsequently, he was moved to the Vivac prison in Arroyo Naranjo and released days later under a precautionary measure that prevented him from going out into the street. From his home, García Aguilera became one of the most visible faces of this social uprising. He gave interviews to numerous international media outlets and television channels, in which he defended the right of the Cuban people to build a different country while denouncing the violent repression that resulted in several disappearances and the unjust imprisonment of more than 600 protesters.
In July 2021, the Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez published a statement questioning the police repression against protesters during the 11J protests. Yunior responded to Silvio with a post on his social media that quickly went viral, in which he asked the musician for 15 minutes of dialogue. A few days later, this meeting took place at the troubadour's Ojalá studios.
García Aguilera defines himself as "a civic artist who wants to build a better country where his son can defend his beliefs without facing violence on the streets, and where he can think freely without having to emigrate." He does not see himself as a politician, but as "a citizen advocate for ideas who wants to transform his reality and who champions a horizontal leadership, based on consensus, where collective intelligence prevails and power and decisions do not rest on a single figure."*(1)
On August 9, 2021, Archipiélago was created, a Facebook group with over 23,000 followers that aims to give voice to all Cubans who wish to build a new Cuba without excluding the exile or the diaspora, while also outlining concrete goals for that construction.
Those objectives are*(2):
1. Fight for the liberation of all the individuals who were detained on July 11, 2021.
2. Attempt to carry out the first authorized peaceful anti-government demonstration with all legal guarantees, without repression or violent acts.
3. Call for a plebiscite with all the guarantees covered by the 2019 constitution that allows the sovereign will of the people of Cuba to be expressed at the polls.
In September 2021, Archipiélago requested authorization from the Government to march against violence in Havana on November 20. In the following days, other provinces on the island submitted this request to their respective Provincial Government offices, thus joining the call.
Like other activists, Yunior has been besieged in his own home, preventing him from moving freely. He has been interrogated multiple times by State Security officials and is a victim of daily harassment from the repressive forces, even being monitored by as many as eight agents at once.
On October 4, 2021, the Center for Studies on the Rule of Law, Cuba Próxima, announced the addition of the playwright to its Deliberative Council.
Source:
(1) and (2) taken from Proyecto Archipiélago, interview with Mónica Baró, August 13, 2021, 23yFlagler
